We continued with walks every month or so but then came an unfortunate hiatus when in a silly holiday accident I ruptured my quadriceps tendon . ( In short , I pulled a very large tv set onto my thigh ). I was in hospital for a week and spent another three weeks in plaster . Full recovery took me seven months and I made it my motivational goal to climb a Munro or two . I selected the Drumochter pair of Geal- Charn and A ’ Mharcoinach , climbing them with my younger son , Seth . Having re-established my fitness I resurrected the choir walking group and our outings resumed .
At first I continued to select and navigated the routes . Then I teamed up with a choir baritone named Dave Bannister , who had recently retired and reckoned he knew most of the available routes in the Home Counties from his own fitness runs ( he was a keen skier ). Together we formalised the requirements . The routes should be around six miles . They had to be circular , starting and finishing at a pub – not just any pub , but one serving real ales and with a decent restaurant . In addition , there had to be another pub around halfway for a spell of rest and recuperation .
You may have noticed a new theme entering the narrative , namely alcohol . It is widely accepted , I think , that many male choristers like to combine their singing with drinking beer . I should add that while I usually limited my mid-walk consumption to half a pint , some of my fellowwalkers could down two pints and then continue without appearing unduly perturbed . ( I need to point out that a further route requirement was that the start / finish pub could be reached by public transport .)
In this way , we crisscrossed the lanes , meadows and woods of Kent and Surrey , with the further relish of grappling with the ascents and descents of the North Downs . This was some way below the demands of Munros , of course , but still challenging enough for a group whose average age was well into the sixties .
Our largest group consisted of 20 , including five wivesor-girlfriends , always welcomed to leaven the implicitly male nature of the enterprise . Our smallest was two , which occurred on one of our earliest walks . I found myself alone at the scheduled start time , engaging in a philosophical debate over whether a solo outing would count as a choir walk . I was spared my dilemma when another choir member arrived and we and we enjoyed a delightful twoperson ramble in northern Surrey .
To begin with , the walking and the singing remained separate activities . But then we discerned how they could be combined . The finest acoustics were to be found beneath a road or railway bridge , best of all the bridges under the M23 or M25 . We would cluster at halfway , the top voices on one side , the lower voices on the other , and would sing two or three of the most resounding numbers from our repertoire .
Then we started singing in the aforementioned pubs that were so crucial to the undertaking . We would sing a couple of numbers at the halfway stopping point , sometimes to a minimal audience of a few drinkers , occasionally more . We were generally well-received and felt we had achieved acceptance when a publican served us a round of drinks on the house on the sole condition we carried on singing . We also took to singing at the start / finish pub after we
Ascending hill in rain near Limpsfield , Kent
6 outdoor focus / summer 2023